This invention relates to insulated electrical terminations of the type comprising a terminal on the end of a conductor and an insulating housing which contains the terminal and a portion of a conductor. The principal embodiment of the invention described herein comprises a termination of a type widely used in the appliance and automotive industries which can be mated with a rectangular tab terminal however, it will be apparent that the principles of the invention can be used with a wide variety of types of electrical terminals.
A commonly used type of electrical terminal comprises a receptacle having a web and curled sidewalls extending from the side edges of the web. Terminals of this type are usually secured to the ends of wires by crimping a U-shaped crimp portion of the terminal onto the wire end. It is frequently necessary, for reasons of safety, to provide insulation in surrounding relationship to the terminal and the end portion of the wire, and the provision of such insulation has been accomplished by several different techniques. One common technique is to provide individual plastic housings which are dimensioned to receive terminals so that the terminals, after being crimped onto wires, can be inserted into the housings in a step subsequent to the crimping step. Pre-insulated terminations are also available and are widely used. The terminals for this type of pre-insulated connecting device are pre-inserted into the housings before the crimping step and the insulation, as well as the crimp portion of the terminal, are deformed and crimped during the crimping step.
Under many circumstances it is highly desirable to crimp the terminal onto the wire in a separate step and follow the procedure described above of inserting the terminal into the housing after crimping. A separate crimping step is preferable under some circumstances for the reason that many types of electrical crimps require extremely high crimp force and many plastic housings cannot withstand these very high crimping forces without cracking or other type of failure.
In accordance with the instant invention, the terminals are partially inserted into the housing so that the contact portion of the terminal is contained within the cavity in the housing and the crimp portion of the terminal lies outside of the housing. Stop means or retaining means are provided for retaining the terminal in its partially inserted condition, the retaining means being such that the terminal can be moved to its fully inserted condition after crimping. The housings with the partially inserted terminals assembled thereto are produced as a continuous strip which can be fed to a crimping apparatus thereby to permit rapid application of the terminals to wires by the final user.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide an improved electrical termination. A further object is to provide an improved method of producing insulated electrical terminations. A further object is to provide economies in the manufacture of fully insulated electrical terminations on the ends of wires.